Agree:

For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a cha...See More

Zeynep Tufekci
Associate Professor at the University of Carolina, writer and techno-sociologist

Rather than a complete totalitarianism based on fear and the blocking of information, the newer methods include demonizing online media and mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information overload, doubt, confusion, harassment, and distraction

There are entire countries where Facebook Messenger has replaced email as the primary channel by which people communicate. This kind of power wielded at such a scale is unprecedented in human experience, and we need to think carefully about whether American democracy can continue to coexist with such power concentrated over the longer run.

Gary King
Professor at the Harvard University, political scientist and quantitative methodologist

We estimate that the government fabricates and posts about 448 million social media comments a year. The Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We show that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change subject.

Disagree:

We'll keep working to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, and to ensure our community is a platform for all ideas and force for good in democracy. The data we have has always shown that our broader impact -- from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote -- played a far bigger role in this election [than mi...See More

I felt sure that allowing anyone to publish information and making it easy to find would enhance democracy and the overall quality of political debate. However, the partitioning you talk about which started on cable TV and might be even stronger in the digital world is a concern. We all need to think about how to avoid this problem. It would seem strange to have to force people to look at ideas th...See More

Alec Ross
Former Senior Innovation Advisor to Hillary Clinton, currently running for Governor of Marylan

The information control that some of the world’s strongmen and terrorist groups have on people is tenuous. The digital world is still relatively new, and for the most part, when young people come to more power, we will have more open societies. If you look at this over decades, I think it will be very positive globally

There have always been new ways of communication to contend with (for example the cassette recordings of Polish solidarity leader Lech Walesa’s speeches that were spread from factory to factory). So technology can very much be democratizing. The question is how we can use technology to increase the democratizing governance aspect instead of dealing with the fact that people often have the wrong in...See More